Story of the Flute
players were also mediocre. Hawkins, writing in 1776, is very severe on the poor flute. Soon after his day, it was considerably improved and many of its defects remedied. At the same time a number of skilled performers appeared, and the flute entered on a golden age. Nicholson, Richardson, Drouet, Tulou, Demersseman (who wrote solos of terrific difficulty), Farrenc, Briccialdi, and other virtuosi were in turn delighting the public both in England and on the continent by their brilliant performances. The flute became the fashionable instrument; everybody who desired to be thought "a gentleman" played it "after a fashion." It was so portable, so convenient; also it was so much in keeping with the romantic Byronically gloomy bearing then in vogue.[1] The public taste was not educated: it was the age of the air variée. The great professional soloists naturally played the kind of music (?) which pleased their auditors and pupils most.[2] Every suitable or unsuitable operatic air, every Welsh, Irish, Scottish, or English tune, was adapted by them for the flute, and tortured into all sorts of interminable scales and exercises yclept variations, with double-tongueing, skips from the highest to the lowest notes and such-like tricks; written to show off the executive skill of the
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- ↑ Lord Byron himself played it, and in 1848 Byron's flute was offered to Charles Dickens, who declined the offer, as he could not play that instrument himself and had nobody in his household who could.
- ↑ In fairness, however, it should be mentioned that several of them, notably Tulou and Demersseman, also wrote some music of a better stamp.
